SAFIRA 2.0

Greetings,

On behalf of the Management Board, it is my distinct honor to report on the Q1 results for 2009.

Our first quarter came at 1,292 Million EUR in services revenue, representing an 11% growth from the same period in 2008, and some 4% above our guidance for the quarter. Profitability also increased as a reflex of our efficiency policies.

We see these improvements as the direct result of the actions and plans put forward in late Q2 2008 that, amongst others, included new services offerings geared towards our cost conscious times, and new partnerships with added value to our solutions portfolio. Our sales in Financial Services increased to represent 74% of our revenue, with BPM solutions showing strong adoption by customers as cost savings and increased operational efficiency tools. Our Managed Services also showed stronger demand as our value proposition of quality, on-budget, and on-time delivery becomes verifiable, and evidently more cost-effective over the long term, than strict low-cost alternatives.

The outlook for the second quarter remains solid, with the business pipeline showing a slight increase both in value and in confidence, supported by some of our solutions such as Enterprise Search starting to gain momentum. These prospects are inline with the initial annual guidance and as such, we reiterate our goals for 2009 with the prudence required by such a year.

In a year marked by economic downturn, we’re very happy to present such results and thank all our co-workers and partners for making it all possible. But most of all, we thank our customers, as much as we reassure them that we’re committed to their efforts of increasing efficiency and driving results. Thank you!

The SAFIRA Management Board

Booyakasha,

These days many of yous hommies talkin’but kp-ayyyyes, init? But da question on everyone’s mind is wot is da marketin gig, and ow can i score one? So, as da DCD main geeza, me is goin to set some objective criteria about ow to qualify fa a marketin gig of da kind dat pumps up yous kp-ayyyyes wiv da same name.

(if you don’t understand the above text, maybe this guy can help you)

First of all, let me just recap a few concepts. KPIs are measures of performance. KPIs can be defined to measure things at different levels. At SAFIRA, we measure KPIs at three levels - Company, Group (department, unit, team, etc), and Individual. Different groups track different KPIs. At DCD, we track an individual KPI called Marketing Gigs. This KPI applies to Managers (M) and Seniors (Z, S and Y).

What follows has nothing to do with the Performance Management system implemented and Managed by the DHR. This is a DCD thing

Another thing to understand is that there is an initiative going on, promoted by the DHR, which is the Global Communication Plan which is a program intended to stimulate internal communication at SAFIRA. Managers, Seniors and Engineers working for DCD also have responsibilities within this program. What the Marketing Gig KPI means is that DCD values internal communication as well, to the point that it indexes the individual component of the variable package.

Hence, to score a Marketing Gig you have to do some valuable communication item. I really don’t care if you did it for the Global Communication Plan, because a project needed it, or simply because you like to do it. What I care about is quality communication, with a positive internal or external impact. My criteria for “quality” is what is missing.

In this quality, I will define “quality communication” as communication that gathers interest from its intended audience, and has positive feedback.I’ll use two methods to measure this interest and feedback: Media interest and team interest. To keep it short, if your piece is published by a reputed publication with a circulation above 1500, you score a marketing gig. If your piece gathers 15 or more votes on PLIGG (AKA news.safira.pt), you score a Marketing Gig. One piece can only score 1 gig, even if it scores on PLIGG AND gets published. Makeovers of the same piece will not count. Covers, rip-offs, and pieces heavily inspired in other’s content will not count, even if only noted as such after publishing. You can quote others, but give your sources credit. Respek!

Quick announcement,

For tomorrow’s selfXpress, along with the 2nd round of DAR’s rehearsal, we’ll have a special guest. LFT is doing an one-time-only encore of his brilliant presentation on Internet Banking, present and future. Be sure not to miss out on this opportunity to see another disciple of the reynolds-duarte-godin-lesig-takahashi school of presentations that I’ve been touting in these sessions.

In the light of such a rare opportunity, everyone is invited to attend this special selfXpress this Thursday April 16th.

See you there.

Dzień dobry,

SAFIRA (www.safira.com.pl) is a reputed, Portuguese IT services company, looking forward to expand in the Polish market. We’re having a couple of “Open Sessions”, on the week of 27th April, in Warsaw, to present the company, our investment plans, and the opportunities for anyone interested in collaborating with us. This is a great opportunity for entrepreneurially minded individuals, with solid IT services background, to get on the ground floor with a young and energized company starting up in a new market.

Let me just give you a brief summary about SAFIRA. Over the last 10 years, we’ve been providing Consulting, Business Applications Development and Managed Services for the top Financial Institutions and Telecom companies in Portugal and have enjoyed both a strong reputation for quality and ranking in the top percentiles of customer satisfaction and loyalty of our domestic market. We’ve also been nominated, by Heidrick & Struggles, in their annual cross-industry survey, as one of the best companies to work for in Portugal for the last two consecutive years. This is one way we ensure that our team of 120 IT pros is one of the most competent and motivated services teams around.

We offer innovative solutions, with solid and measurable value propositions to large corporate customers, in partnership with companies like Microsoft, Google and Lombardi. From Enterprise Search to Mortgage BPM, through top rated Internet Banking systems, we’ve successfully tackled a number of exciting challenges that translated for our customers into increased sales, cost savings, lower operational risks, higher customer retention, and even internationally acclaimed awards.

Having already established a sound customer base in the Financial Services industry in Poland, we’re now actively developing new business opportunities within this industry, with a targeted set of services and solutions offerings. That’s where these Open Sessions come in. This is my invitation for you to join me in a 1 hour presentation, plus an “as-long-as-you-want” Q&A, and learn first-hand from one of the founders (that will be me), what we plan to bring to the Polish market, and about the kind of help we are hoping to get to accomplish that.

We’re hiring for most positions, but at this point we’re mostly interested in meeting people eager to find the opportunities to deliver best-in-class business solutions, that make a real difference for their customer’s businesses, or simply assemble great teams of expert business and technical professionals to provide top-notch Consulting, Application Management or IT Management services

If you’re interested in learning more, send me a note here on Linked.in, or to lma(at)safira(dot)pt, saying you plan to attend one of the Open Sessions I’ll be doing in two weeks. In your email, please write a couple of quick lines about yourself, your professional track record and why you want to attend. An URL to your online profile would be great. Don’t forget to mention which session you’ll be attending. You can find more about us in our website, but you will not find what I’ll be presenting in our Open Sessions. At least not for now.

The sessions will take place in the following schedule. I’ll be accepting registrations until April 23rd.

1st Session – Tuesday, 28th of April, 9:00 AM, local time
2nd Session – Wednesday, 29th of April, 18:00 PM, local time

Both sessions will take place at the Metropolitan building, in Warsaw, pl. Piłsudskiego, entrance nr 3, 1st floor. It’s a Regus office.

Hope to meet you there. In the meantime, let me know about specific topic you are interested in so I can tailor my presentation to best suite you.

Kind regards.

To the selfXpress crowd,

I uploaded the footage of DAR’s rehersal on YOUTube. Follow the links below to watch the videos. I had to split the presentation in two parts because of the 10 minutes limitation, but I think it’ll not be a problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN1EL343uzI (part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O58Wg-O90uU (part 2)

You can post your improvement suggestions here, if you like, while DAR works his talk for another go at the next selfXpress to take place on April 16th.

No, it’s not a post with the lyrics to the ABBA song. Truly sorry about that.

It’s 2 AM last night and I’m there thinking about presentations (go figure). I’m thinking, how can I make a powerful message about the tremendous responsibility we, as a company and as a team, face every single day working for the high profile customers we chose to work for? Then I want to make another point about how prepared we are to handle that responsibility.

Just minutes before starting this post I recalled NRP’s presentation at the kickoff. Then I recalled a couple of things more, and they all started to point into a common direction. I’m thinking, “our software handles serious loads of money, every single day, innit?”. Taking NRP’s slide about money moved by some software we recently for one customer as a sample, that application handled roughly 77,5 million Euros in a single day, on the 12th of February. Business as usual, no biggie there, right? Riiiiight!

How about some e-banking stuff, retail and corporate, we’ve been working on since circa 2001 for some other customer? How much money do those apps move in a day? And I really mean plural because I’m counting six of them off of the top of my head.
And how about some financial products platform gizmo we did for this other customer? How much does that baby move around each day? Our own site mentions a case study at BES-Vida about our software handing 1.500 million Euros a year in risk products contracts. That’s 1,5 billion Euros a year in some cultures, but its 6,25 million Euros a day in every culture I know.

My point is, the apps we’ve been developing over the years, and that are currently into production, handle some serious money value every day. Thats a great responsibility! Exactly how much money our apps move every day is what I’d like to know.

So, guys, can you help me figure out how much money does Safira’s software handle on an average day? Money transfers of all types, contracts subscribed, contracts canceled, and every type of order that has an Euro value attached to it counts.
I want to come up with a number in Euros that is the sum of what all Safira developed apps handle on an average day. Depending on what we can come up with, this might just be usable for the kind of message I’m trying to pass.

Can you go into your apps and ask them logs how much money are they handling these days, then report back to me, please? While you’re at it, try to figure out how many customers and customer sessions your app serves a day as well. That might be another interesting number.

Don’t post answers here. E-mail them to me directly.

Thanks.